Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis, this paper updates, for 123 countries, the estimates of tax capacity-defined as the maximum level of revenue a country can feasibly achieve - and tax effort - measured as the ratio of actual tax revenue to tax capacity. It also introduces two novel models that...

This article introduces Green EUROMOD, the environmental extension of the EU's tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD. It provides a novel framework for evaluating the distributional, environmental, and fiscal impacts of green policy reforms across the 27 EU Member States. The model captures...

This paper explores the role of informal taxation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and aims to shed light on informal fiscal realities and the implications of informal tax institutions for governance and state legitimacy. Relying on mixed-methods data from household surveys, interviews, and...

Inheritance tax is levied on the estates of the deceased, including on lifetime gifts made up to seven years prior to death. Roman emperors levied taxes on inheritances, and the British history goes back to the Stamp Act 1694, later modernised by the Finance Act 1894 with the introduction of the...

Countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are varied in their political systems and geography—factors that have shaped their economic development and tax policy choices. This diversity means that taxation must be tailored to local factors and constraints. This book surveys...

This paper argues that Colombia's taxation problems reflect a deeper political economy equilibrium shaped by extractive institutions, extreme inequality, and cultural norms that favor individual solutions over collective ones. Historical legacies produced a weak and often distrusted state, which...

This paper reveals how tax complexity, in the form of loopholes and assets overlapping different sections of tax returns, contributes to tax avoidance and evasion. Using administrative data from the Netherlands, it shows how an auditing announcement in 2005 triggered large increases in declared...

This paper aims to assess the extent to which cash transfers, direct taxes, and social contributions help to reduce gender income inequalities in seven Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. We apply microsimulation techniques to household...

Civil wars often erode state sovereignty, as institutions are replaced or co-opted by armed groups that establish informal governance structures. Among these, rebel taxation emerges as a key tool for financing wartime activities and administering territories. We explore whether rebel taxation...

In this paper we theoretically analyse the European Union's ongoing political impasse regarding the choice of a single method to allocate multinational enterprises' profits across countries and we find that this strategic situation resembles a coordination game with distributional consequences....

We study how individuals adjust their labor supply in response to tax reforms that alter income tax progressivity. In an online experiment with 522 participants, we compare responses to reforms that replace a progressive tax system with a flat tax and vice versa. We find asymmetric effects:...

This paper estimates the tax capacity and tax effort of the nine provinces in South Africa, allowing for the assessment of the revenue-mobilizing ability of provinces and overall tax system efficiency. Provincial tax capacity and effort is estimated via a stochastic frontier approach using the...

Can the exposure to civil war make people more motivated to pay taxes and (re)build the state? Our project examines this question in the context of Africa, a region where civil wars have frequently undermined state capacity. We move from the popular Tillian view of war-making as state-making to...

This paper examines income tax systems in over thirty countries over the past forty years using microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study. We show that income tax systems worldwide are well approximated by a two-parameter log-linear effective tax function. We provide country- and year-specific...

Bellicose theories of state-building suggest that wars enable the emergence of strong states via the mechanism of increased war-time fiscal capacities. We explore the hitherto littleanalysed micro-level foundations of this claim. Does the experience of war increase public support for higher...

Countries differ in their approaches to the treatment of tax claims in insolvency. Historically, most countries have granted priority to tax claims. In the late 20th century, however, some countries abolished or reduced tax priorities at the same time that sweeping insolvency reforms were...

The 2025 Annual Report on Taxation (ART) describes the state of play of taxation in the European Union (EU) Member States. The report starts with providing the macroeconomic outlook and the challenges posed by an ageing population. Then it assesses recent developments of the tax mix to inform...

This study explores the short-term welfare and distributive effects of selected fuel tax and subsidy reforms in six countries in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region that are aimed at promoting the transformation of energy systems and have the potential to generate much-needed fiscal...

This paper evaluates the redistributive and labour supply effects of transitioning from a joint to a fully individualised income tax system in Ireland. The current Irish tax system, which remains partially joint since the early 2000's, provides a financial advantage to married couples by...

This study examines the effect of tax complexity on the market value of publicly traded firms. Using firm-level measures of tax complexity, we find that a one standard deviation increase in tax complexity-comparable in magnitude to the rise following the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act-is associated...

Effective policymakers must balance the demands of formulating a corporate tax system that raises revenue and spurs economic activity (e.g., investment) while promoting a "level playing field" across firms. Balancing these tradeoffs has likely caused tax systems to become more complex over time,...

We examine behavioral frictions in entrepreneurs' tax planning when choosing between corporate and partnership taxation under a check-the-box rule. Using German tax return data, we show that only a small fraction of entrepreneurs opt for corporate taxation, despite substantial potential tax...

This Flash Eurobarometer investigates EU citizens' attitudes and preferences towards taxation and tax policy. It examines key themes, such as EU citizens' perception of the desired tax mix - that is, the adequate balance between different types of taxes like income, consumption taxes (e.g. VAT),...

This Flash Eurobarometer investigates EU citizens' attitudes and preferences towards taxation and tax policy. It examines key themes, such as EU citizens' perception of the desired tax mix - that is, the adequate balance between different types of taxes like income, consumption taxes (e.g. VAT),...

The 2025 Annual Report on Taxation (ART) describes the state of play of taxation in the European Union (EU) Member States. The report starts with providing the macroeconomic outlook and the challenges posed by an ageing population. Then it assesses recent developments of the tax mix to inform...

The aim of this paper is to provide a legal documentation that is conducted under a thorough review of tax legislation and create a dataset, consisting of 120 laws that brought significant changes in the vast majority of categories of taxes in Greece from 1974 to 2018. It is noteworthy that a...

This paper presents evidence of market externalities of tax evasion: firms' tax non-compliance distorts the outcomes of their competitors. Using novel administrative data on the universe of Italian firms, we compute a tax evasion proxy as the fraction of individual firms that manipulate their...

Dual-regime business tax systems typically subject smaller firms to an output (turnover) tax and larger firms to a profit (corporate) tax. Despite their prevalence, there is little formal analysis of their optimal design. This paper addresses this gap by developing a theoretical framework to...

Although reassignment of policy instruments among governments in many federations is a recurring event, there is no widely accepted, positive model of the phenomenon. This stands in contrast to the well established body of work on the normative theory of the efficient federal assignment. In this...

There is no doubt that taxes are critical to the economic well-being of a country. What seems to be unclear is why tax compliance has been a major problem for tax authorities in Nigeria and some other sub-Saharan African states, thereby circumscribing the ability government to actualise its...